Gay Woman On the Opposite Seat

(For 12/6/2016)

Pink t shirt, boy cut, sunglasses on top 

Like fashion statements can sometimes overlap with
General sentiment
Like wearing pink is reinstating identity
And negating it
Like wearing pink is wearing white and wearing black
Which is to say is
good mourning.

The sunlight falls on your forearm in
Checkered patterns like it is reflecting
The physical bindings you are in
Like there is livewire around your wrist
Even when it isn't really
Like you are an animal trying to escape international borders
And the shadow of your past
Is the musky scent you can never rid get of

I've never been to a bar a pub a place
Never smelt the musky scent of hopeful sex
Heterosexual is kinda unsafe
I hope you know of seedy retreats
Train traveller on the street, The Street leading you to the sheets
After getting high on six shots of freedom and emancipation
And pink polo t-shirt coloured identity formation
I hope that tattoo peeking at me from beneath your sleeve
Develops eyes in safe homosexual company.

Men's watch, gold chain, are they family legacies?
Do your parents know?
If they shut you up in a pub
Would your parents know?
When your name comes in the papers tomorrow,
Is that the first time they'd know
That their daughter who kept low-key, shoved boys against the wall, looked at her breasts strangely
Died unhappy and gay?

Did you ever have to scream through shut doors
Creaking down with parental pressure
'Would you rather have me dead?'
Did you have to taste the floor more times than just that once
To keep your guts from spilling over?

Girl near the window seat,
You use the same shampoo as me
And have rough hands that carry its scent
Just like me.
Do you think when he was shooting them down
He could smell himself?

Ghost Towns

Walk around my room, my buildings of stacked away books

Don't trip and send the pile crashing
But if you do, the paperbacks will cushion you
Or if they don't at least
It wasn't sticks or stones
But words that broke your bones.

I'm laughing, right now
The coffee is hot, right now
It's in the kitchen, so it'll burn and spill before I reach out
But I'm surrounded by buildings
And I'm waiting for you to stand up so I can laugh and say,
'Godzilla'.

When we shut the lights and walk around
And watch our step to stop
Your Palahniuk from falling on my Ulysses
Your wrist reaching out for mine
Your car with its yellow pinprick eyes
Staring back even as we wish goodbye.

We're building ghost towns that no one outside us knows.

We have a secret language marked out in the nooks
Made by all the blocks of books
Tell me you're not a dancer and
We'll learn ballet
Tell me you don't walk barefoot
And I'll let your skin taste this marble valley.

Here is the blueprints on our palms
Of all the stories we've stolen from the buildings
Of how we built a world with words and
Then changed them in our head
And waited for when we're asleep, saying,
'They'll come back then.'

This is our ghost town
That we shelve out in half and half
For favourites, childhood-read,
Saving for our kids
Or when they invent technology for our dogs to read.

This is our ghost town
The one I'll pack and shut before anyone gets home
I'm not planning on leaving any evidence outside
The plans for what book is which brick
And which brick is for which building
And which one has love notes from a younger, older life
And which one is the one that's an allegory for you and I.

                                        

You Are Here/ Imaginary Homes

Turn right, after sunrise.
*
When I was a child I remember the blue walls
And all the faces that stared at me through glass
Whiskers, whispers, bubbles sent out to me in secret
I tapped the walls and there it was
That fish glancing to look at me.

You are here.

I liked getting pushed on swings
Until I realized no one could push me as hard as I wanted to rise
Seven year old rising into the sky
Seven year old wrapping leaves to make wounds run dry.

You are here.

This is how the sky shifts, pushing the clouds
Alongside
This is all you'll know of the sky- the patch from the window
This the story, and this is the pen,
You will always remain the child
Who danced in candlelight
And whose mother will never forget it
You are here

You will always know the almost-version of things
And push memory to move along, like a sullen pet
You are here

Memory is always a play involving Ghosts,
So that is how we were taught to understand fear.

You are
Nine, cycling in summer, with sunlight colouring you
And seeping into your laughter.
You know no other way.
You are
Eight, in a pink skirt and parka
Bending your head into a photograph,
You do not know it is the last for a few years.
You are
Seven and ill and playing Cinderella's evil stepmother
You remember how she was illustrated
And that that is how you were taught what 'ugly' means.
You are
Turning nineteen and you're dealing with being nine, eight, seven inside.
You are here.

When the room turned airy from sunlight and the air carried sunlight away
You are here
When the lights went out and you learned how to make crying lose voice
You are here
When you look into the mirror and lose sense of your fingers
You are here.

At some point you'll stop avoiding confronting the empty lot
Which has headless dolls, and scripts for the extras,
And you'll be able to build that castle you've been avoiding
And I hope it'll be tall enough to feel the air.

You are here
And you know imaginary homes need to breathe.